Over the past few years I’ve been doing podcast interviews with film composers, and in several cases I’ve created background montages to support the music extracts that appear in both the visual podcast versions on KQEK.com’s YouTube channel, and in HD extracts at BHA’s YouTube and Vimeo channels.

Naturally, you end up with a wealth of footage that either didn’t make the final cut or was part of interesting tests and trial versions, and it’s been my intention for some time to build up an archive of footage that can be used as stock footage and loops in other people’s projects – as background textures, pulsing objects and patterns or loops in related musical or DJ-styled content – and all royalty-free for a reasonable fee.

Those who’ve checked out even a few of the posts here and the aforementioned channels can tell the initial images are captured using vintage tube or CCD cameras, and sometimes bounced between digital and analogue realms before they’re finalized as a layered digital file – an approach that hopefully makes some of the clips in the archive stand out a bit.

Figuring out a preliminary process and finding the right footage host & sales interface are definite challenges, and from my research I noticed most major commercial stock footage libraries are highly selective in what they take – largely because they (naturally) don’t want unnecessary duplication of existing stills and clips; they just want the money shots.

Although I will submit the sexiest pieces to non-exclusive vendors for sale as uncompressed files, for this initial endeavour, the files will have some compression, varying between 1280×720 and 1920×1080 H264 files. However, many of the files can be purchased as uncompressed and / or with customized elements (colours) for a different rate directly from me.

What I’m initially proposing is a series of collections that in some cases contain some of the layers of abstract images used in the montages, with two sets of collections to be published each month, with the possibility of a subscription series in the near future.

For now, though, the inaugural collection is derived from my recent podcast with Nima Fakhrara, and stems from three separate montages that support select music extracts (although all stock footage will be 100% silent).

The trailers for each set need to be finalized, but I’ve already posted an early edit of the Intro section that’ll precede extracts within each trailer:

(When the completed Intro & Outro sections are done, I’ll post further links here, plus some still of the gear used to create the retro titles that unintentionally end up resembling titles from some 1983 late night music show.)

The aim is to have the first collection available for purchase by mid-October, with another 2 to follow in November, and so on, as I’ve a similar amount of podcasts that’ll be published during that time, some with composers, others featuring bonus audio content tied to a review and / or Editor’s Blog at my media review site, KQEK.com.

I’ve also posted on Vimeo and YouTube HD extracts from the Fakhrara podcast, which is tied to the release of music from The Girl in the Photographs and the interactive video game 1979 Revolution: Black Sunday. These excellent scores are available from Lakeshore Records, and were covered in detail at KQEK.com.